Charles Cooke of National Review Online is no fan of President Biden’s re-election bid. He even takes issue with the president’s slogan.
I have no idea if Joe Biden will win reelection. I think, at present, that he’s the obvious favorite, but, as a hostage-to-fortune sort of candidate, that could easily change. What I do know is that, if I were his team, I would not have chosen “Let’s finish this job” as my launch slogan.
“Let’s finish this job” is the type of slogan that a popular, successful president might run. And Biden is not a popular, successful president. Seventy percent of Americans — including 66 percent of independents — don’t want him to run again. His approval rating is at 41 percent, with his disapproval at 54 percent. His time in office has been marked by chronic inflation, a problem that only 20 percent of Americans think that Biden has made better, that 28 percent think he’s made worse, and that 49 percent think he’s ignored. Only 14 percent of Americans think that the economy is good or excellent.
As Axios points out, the only thing that Biden has now is Trump. Biden, the outlet notes today, is already running a “never-Trump campaign,” with Trump serving as his “reason to run and the issue to build his campaign around.” Perhaps that‘s the “job” he needs to “finish,” but, if it is, it’s a pretty risky play. For a start, it’s not guaranteed that Trump will be the nominee. If Ron DeSantis wins the nomination, Biden’s rationale will disappear, and he’ll be left running against a much younger candidate, while 68 percent of voters believe that, at 80+, he’s too old to be president again. And even if Trump is the nominee, it’s not guaranteed that the anti-Trump sentiment that has marked the last two election cycles will continue to outstrip everything else in voters’ minds.
